On road safety and the importance of driver training
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2009
Mon
16
Feb
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IN THE FAST LANE
autoinsight, January 2009
by Peter Burroughes
News that the road death toll over the holiday period dropped by around 40% was almost as good as the Proteas beating Australia 2-0 in the cricket test series Down Under. While the number of fatalities remains unacceptable, any reduction is cause for celebration and this one is the largest ever drop over this festive period in the country’s history.
However, it concerns that the Department of Transport believes this is due to visible policing. The AA was moved to issue a media release welcoming this significant news, but commenting that the department’s claims were unrealistic.
The AA felt that there were a lot less people on the roads and that traffic volumes were significantly down as consumers feel the squeeze of harsh economic conditions and a global financial crisis. Christmas and New Year are times my wife and I stay at home and enjoy the sunny days and empty roads (and open parking spaces) as the denizens of eGoli head for the beaches and the bush.
This year was noticeably different. The streets of Johannesburg were quieter (although the number of defective traffic lights seemed to be greater than usual), but there wasn’t the exodus of previous years. Restaurants were full and the roads were busy. I’m sure the AA is correct and that more people stayed at home or travelled shorter distances to save money. Even with the reduction in fuel prices, the cost of motoring is high and, with the high cost of living in general, we are all feeling the pinch.
My old friend Basil Mann, a respected and experienced driver training expert and champion of road safety, commented to me that it was good to see the authorities were talking about visible policing, a key element of road safety around the world. Basil’s Shayela Approved organisation, supported by the insurance industry, co-ordinates the efforts of 27 affiliated driver training operations around the country that strive to meet a safety or defensive driving standard established by Shayela (‘go safely’).
Basil, drew my attention to the role of heavy vehicles and their drivers in the road safety scenario. According to Basil, a famous racing driver in another life who raced against, and beat, the likes of Ayrton Senna and one Michael Schumacher, there are six to eight serious crashes involving a truck every day. One of the reasons is that there is a critical shortage of suitably qualified heavy vehicle drivers in South Africa.
“We are interviewing between 30 and 50 drivers weekly for assessment for suitable jobs on the road,” Basil told me. Shockingly, only about five of these are ‘trainable’.
Even more worrying is the fact, according to Basil, that these drivers are getting jobs anyway, because they have a valid code 10 or code 14 licence and no-one is questioning their credentials. Fleet operators are under so much pressure to get the job done that they are not doing their homework when employing drivers. In addition, drivers are overworked. This all adds up to a recipe for disaster.
Basil is something of a lone crusader in trying to improve the standard of driving to save lives and costs and the insurance industry, who bear massive costs as a result of the carnage on our roads, are to be applauded for their support.
Perhaps the industry should take a stand and not insure clients unless they can prove their drivers are properly trained; and truck operators who hire unqualified drivers should be heavily penalised.
Originally published in and reproduced here with the permission of auto insight.
Click on the Listing link just below the Heading of this article, for more information about Shayela Approved.
Source: Shayela Approved (Pty) Ltd
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